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Python vs. Lisp -- please explain

Paul Boddie paul at boddie.org.uk
Wed Feb 22 09:05:20 EST 2006 
Kay Schluehr wrote:
> Paul Rubin wrote:
> > "Kay Schluehr" <kay.schluehr at gmx.net> writes:
> > > I talked to Richard Emslie recently and he told me that the PyPy team
> > > works on a mechanism to create CPython-extension modules written in
> > > RPython i.e. a statically translateable subset of Python.
> >
> > Sounds great but is that a whole lot different from pyrex?

I've wondered that as well.

> RPython is Python code not a different language. In a sense RPython
> consists of a set of rules usual Python has to conform to make complete
> type-inference feasible. Here is an overview of those rules.
>
> http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/coding-guide.html#restricted-python

But does that make it "proper Python"? Having, for example, only one
type associated with a name (they use the term "variable", though) at
any given time makes it more like various statically typed or
functional languages, although I can fully understand why you'd want
this restriction.

Paul
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